Two weeks ago the kids got to take part in a special project at school. The principal had invited some circus folk to come and spend some time with the kids and at the end of the week, they got to perform in a circus of their own. This circus is a special circus, that is filled with people trained to work with children and teach them simple circus acts. The first day, they gave a small presentation of all the different acts the children could choose to learn, and they spent the rest of the week practicing these acts. It sounds at first like a wasted week of learning, but I think it will end up to be one of their fondest memories of childhood.
Each day the kids would come home so excited to tell me what they had done that morning or afternoon. They loved the circus tents, they loved the trailers the circus folk lived in, they loved being together with all the kids in the whole school, they loved seeing the teachers try to do some of the tricks, it was just a positive experience all around. Nicholas decided to be a magician, Sarah was an acrobat and Sophie was a juggler. The groups were divided by size, but not age. Meaning, that they had two groups of trapeze artists because so many kids wanted to do it, but kindergartners were in the same group with the 6th graders. It taught them how to all get along, have patience, and also made the big 6th graders seem not so scary to the younger children.
There were enough kids, that they ended up having three performances. Our children were all performing on the same night, wasn't that nice? And in case you were wondering, no they didn't charge the parents an admittance fee. The school paid for most of the circus' fee, and the rest was raised by the children doing several different fund raisers. They helped a farmer repair a bunch of fencing, picked up trash around the lake for the city, sold homemade treats at school, and collected donations for every lap they ran during a special recess. The fundraisers were apparently so successful that there is a bunch of money left over and they are putting it in a special savings account to be used for a fun activity for the children at a later time.
We got there about 10 minutes before it started, but the tent was already almost all the way full. We ended up sitting on the very back bench, but this was a good thing. We were right next to the raised tent flap, meaning we had a cool breeze during the whole hour long performance. The other people got to feel the heat from the stage lights and bask in the stifling body heat generated by their neighbors. :) We also let Noah and Alexandra stand on the benches to see better, and since no one was behind them, no one complained. Even the music that accompanied the entire performance was done mostly by children. Nick's friend, Pascal played the drums, one boy played the clarinet, there was someone playing keyboard, and one other instrument that I can't remember. They sounded AWESOME!
Nick's group of musicians called themselves "Star Wars Episode Seven" and they came out wearing Jedi cloaks and did this really cool little dance number with their light sabers (4 of which belonged to us). Each child got a turn to do one magic trick, then they would do a little light saber trick all together in between each trick. It was really neat, and the magic tricks were pretty good!
Sarah's acrobat group was so cute, but I was too short to see her dramatic entrance of a running somersault through a plastic hoop. I could see enough to tell that that was what she had done, but missed the actual somersault. She grinned huge through the whole thing and waved and smiled at us every time she saw us. It was okay, though, lots of the kids were doing the same thing to their parents. She looked way cute doing the hula hoop, I have to admit.
Sophie's juggling group was really cute. There wasn't a whole lot of actual juggling involved, but they did toss giant bowling pins and rings to one another. They also twirled the rings on their wrists very fast. Sophie had practiced this move so much one day that she came home with huge bruises all up her forearms. I told her that maybe she should practice something else for a little while. :( Our neighbor, Luca stole the show, though. He hula hooped for a solid 5 minutes at least. Everyone was stomping their feet, clapping in rhythm and whistling the whole time. He was eating it up and just kept going and going and going.. So fun!
After it was all over, the kids got to have a sausage and bread, while they basked in all the compliments from the audience. They got to bed very late, and did not like having all that stage makeup scrubbed off their faces, but these were the only negative spots in the whole night. It was a fantastic opportunity and I am so glad they got to be a part of it. Oh, how could I forget? The final performance was the flame throwers/eaters. Yes, that is real fire. Yes, that is little kids tossing the real fire-lit torches to each other, and yes, they actually swallowed flames at the very end. You could tell the boys in this group got a huge kick out of doing something so brave. Chris looked at me and said, "Now that is something you would never see happening in America." But they had tons of adults there to make sure no one got hurt, and what a story these kids will have to tell for the rest of their lives!
